The idea isn’t to be more or less opinionated, its to learn to respect other people enough that you can manage communication and relationships with others who have different ideas. Unless you can make space for other people, you can’t reasonably expect them them to make space for you.
Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
91–100 of 118 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#92Great question - I've struggled with the opposite, not being opinionated 'enough'. I've noticed I tend to have more faith in other people's convictions than my own, assuming, essentially, if they believe in something, there must be a great reason behind it My own opinions tend to be weakly expressed & weakly held. It's usually been good, allowing me to listen and understand others. However, growing in career, I feel…
This is a American culture thing as well. It regularly surprises me how people that sounded like experts actually turned out to know less than me. I've come to learn to discount anything American-raised people say and double the assumed knowledge of a quiet person from other places.
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#93Listen before speaking. Be willing to let another person change your opinion. If you're only here to enforce your opinion, then don't talk about the topic. This is why religion and politics are usually not welcome in most parts. There was an opinionated conversation on anarchy philosophy a few weeks ago on front page HN. Most of the comments came from people who obviously did not open the link at all. Some from peopl…
> This is why religion and politics are usually not welcome in most parts. This is a very "American" view. Plenty of folks manage to have conversations about these topics in a respectful way - and yes, that includes conversations with strangers and in the workplace too. I don't know why they're so polarising in some contexts, as if everyone has to maintain complete loyalty to their "sports team" and has no time for a…
Personally speaking, I stopped sharing opinions around these topics once I saw people losing their livelihoods for carrying the "wrong" opinions. I'll still discuss with close friends and family. My sister and I have some very spirited conversations around politics, but I wouldn't do the same with my boss. I don't even know what my boss's opinions are and I'm fine with that. As for the "American" comment, there are countries where physical altercations happen in Parliament over political disagreements. Holding passionate opinions is definitely not unique to Americans.
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#94Great question - I've struggled with the opposite, not being opinionated 'enough'. I've noticed I tend to have more faith in other people's convictions than my own, assuming, essentially, if they believe in something, there must be a great reason behind it My own opinions tend to be weakly expressed & weakly held. It's usually been good, allowing me to listen and understand others. However, growing in career, I feel…
To make matters worse, it's not just inner versus expressed confidence that varies. The confidence may or may not be warranted at all. Not everyone is aware of their own competency.
Similarly, many real world problems lack direct visibility. A person or group may not know enough facts to know what problem they are facing. Ideally, this is a multi-stage problem (i.e. troubleshooting) where you first diagnose the problem and then think about how to address it. (Edit to add: and diagnostics can be iterative, where you have to form a hypothesis and test with a low-risk or low-cost solution to help gather more evidence.)
But, a common group dynamics challenge is that members of the group may not communicate well enough and therefore lack a shared understanding. Once they diverge in terms of their belief about the problem at hand, subsequent debates can become mutually incomprehensible due to unstated assumptions. And, if one member realizes the divergence and tries to steer the group back together, they may face agitated resistance from the members who have already jumped to conclusions as "fact". They may not even realize that there was an earlier starting point and some of their "facts" are supposition...
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#95It's good to be opinionated and share that opinion. However, it should be shared in a way to invite debate. Be careful not to tie your identity to your opinions.
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#96There's nothing wrong with being opinionated! Even strongly. But you need to have a strong sense of humility to go along with it.
Know that any one of your strong opinions could be wrong. Know that equally smart people could disagree with you. Know that the world doesn't care very much whether you're right or wrong.
If you're asking this question because you're finding you have conflict with people over your strong opinions, the problem isn't that your opinions are strong. It's that you're letting them control you.
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#97Being opinionated is a fine quality, but only if a healthy dose of curiosity is maintained. Otherwise, an opinionated and incurious person, which tends to be an argumentative person, adopts a pattern of behaviors that satisfy their ego, but which are also less selfishly beneficial. It is better to learn by listening than living and dying by fixed opinion.
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#98The more you read diverse ideas, diverse political views, diverse paradigms, diverse worldviews, diverse literature, the wider your conscience horizon you'll have. That will make it more certain on where to be more or less opinionated and, more importantly, when is worth to express it. I'm very opinionated in a lot of things that I don't give enough f*ks to really care about other people understanding. Removing them…
May I ask you, what is a "diverse idea"?
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#99I stopped being opinionated when I realized that the vast majority of what I'd be opinionated about pretty much doesn't matter enough at all, or doesn't matter enough to get worked up about. It's an ego thing, and being serious about relatively mundane things is pretty fragile. Not that opinions in general are bad, but even if one is very well-informed, one choice over another often just isn't very significant.
Especially in code, if there's a reason to pick one style over another and it seems preferable, I'll say that, but if someone does something else it's probably pretty negligible, and any sensible opinion should change over time anyway.
If someone on my team was very opinionated, I'd think of it as immature. In a non-professional context, I might argue for the fun but that's it. I like back and forth more than black and white.
Re: Ask HN: How to be less opinionated?
#100This is mostly just a cheap trick, but see if you can convert a statement into a question.
Then maybe think about whether you're curious about the answer. Do you want to know more?